14

We wandered into camp and stood by the fire in our torn clothes and the blood crusting on Mikey’s face.

‘Hello?’ I shouted, after too long being ignored.

Faces turned to us like satellite dishes shifting towards their signal, none of them I recognised, until Beth emerged from her father’s tent.

‘You pair,’ she said, marching towards us.

‘Aye?’ I said.

Beth said, ‘Hold on,’ and then turned, facing the camp at large. ‘All right,’ she said, her voice raised. ‘Just so everyone knows, I’m making an executive decision. These two here,’ she said, her finger moving between me and Mikey, ‘these two are hereby banished from the camp. Got that?’

I took a step closer to her. ‘We’re banished?’

‘You heard me,’ she said. ‘A pair of fucking liabilities you two.’

I couldn’t think of anything to say. I looked at Mikey and he shrugged. What I would’ve given to show her how powerful I was, how easily I could beat her. Just a moment alone together and I would show her.

‘Just a second, Sister Beth,’ said a voice from behind me.

Beth screwed her eyes up. ‘What now?’

‘You’re being hasty,’ said Brother Terry, emerging from behind the far side of the campfire.

‘Honestly,’ said Beth, holding her hands up. ‘I do not have time for all this. I’ve put up with you for so long Tel but please, just get on with whatever you want to get on with in peace and quiet.’

Brother Terry nodded. ‘I’m happy to do so.’

‘Good.’

‘Unless it interferes with our freedom of religion.’

Beth moaned.

‘You don’t agree, Sister Beth?’

The entire place silent.

‘No, no, I agree. Whatever Tel, I agree.’

‘Then these two stay,’ he said, nodding at us.

I was expecting a gasp from somewhere but none came. Everyone stared at us

‘No,’ said Beth. ‘They don’t. They caused trouble at the protest, meaning these goons start showing up – these plainclothes or private security or whatever they are – and then best of all they come straight back here. Do I have to go on?’

‘You can go on if you like. They stay.’

‘They go.’

‘They’re very brave parishioners, standing up to the authorities like that. Did you know that our very own Jesus Christ was seen as something of a terrorist in his time? A Jewish fundamentalist. Yes, there is a rich tradition of non-compliance in the Church.’

Beth made a face.

Brother Terry smiled. ‘Do we need to get Father involved?’

‘Oh Jesus. Fine, fine. Tell me why they stay?’

‘Because,’ Brother Terry said, circling the campfire and grasping hold of Mikey’s robed shoulder, ‘of this one. He’s who we’ve been waiting for.’

Beth laughed. ‘You don’t mean to say…’

‘I do.’

I’d had enough of their carry on by then. Either we were in or we were out. I put my hand up. ‘What’s the story here?’ I asked.

Brother Terry put a gentle finger against his own bottom lip. ‘How do I put this best?’ he wondered. ‘Hm. Well, your brother is the Christ reborn. In the flesh. How’s that for starters?’

Then the gasp came, from the robed side of camp. Beth started to laugh though her face was untroubled by any genuine amusement.

‘Laugh all you like Sister, it’s true. I’ve read the signs, I have divined the portents. I just never expected he would walk into our laps so easily.’

Mikey shrugged himself free of Brother Terry’s grip. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about mate.’

‘I’m on about you. You’re it. You’re him. You probably don’t know it yet but you are.’

Even under all the blood I could tell that Mikey was rattled. He was tense in the arms and was keeping his back to the fire. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘You’ve got it wrong.’

‘Can I politely disagree? You are. Isaac has told me a lot about you, of the sacrifices you’ve made, of your long years in the desert. I mean, look at today even. You’ve shed blood in order to assist the greater good. What is more Christ-like than that?’

I watched Terry as he spoke, his bulging cheeks working away, his slippery hair blazing. I watched his eyes as he mentioned Mikey’s long years in the desert and then I realised.

He knew.

‘It may not be clear to you just this second,’ he continued, ‘but momentous events are close at hand. Your revelation is coming.’

And then Beth exploded. ‘This is what I mean,’ she was saying, pushing folk out the way and getting her brother by the front of his robe. ‘You are the problem here. Things were fine until you showed up.’

Brother Terry wasn’t looking at her but rather over her shoulder. I followed his gaze and was surprised to see a miniscule, weathered man in the opening of the largest tent. It was their father.

‘What’s going on?’ he breathed, his hand flapping up and down the front of his leather vest.

Beth and Terry fell apart, standing to attention. The old man glowered at them.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘Nothing,’ said Beth.

‘Nothing,’ agreed Terry.

‘Good,’ he said, shuffling back into his tent, pulling the waist of his cords back up his skinny arse.

The camp held its breath, waiting for the next thing to happen. Terry took the lead, sweeping through them all, dragging Mikey along by the sleeve of his robe with me following behind.

‘We can discuss this later,’ he told Beth as he brushed past her.

He deposited Mikey and me inside the largest yurt, closing us in with him. He turned on the electric light that hung from the pointed ceiling and stood in front of us, beaming.

‘You slimy bastard,’ I said. ‘You know.’

‘Of course I know,’ said Brother Terry. ‘Do you think I’m daft? You heard my sermon the other day. Your brother’s case was always very important to me. To the church, I mean.’

Mikey looked baffled. He gave me one of his looks.

‘This one,’ I said, letting my finger stray very close to Brother Terry’s face, ‘knows all about you, Mikey. All about you getting the jail and the wee lassie and everything. It’s all part of this sick thing he’s got going on here.’

‘Fuck,’ exclaimed Mikey.

‘What is it you want?’ I asked. ‘If it’s cash then you’re out of luck.’

Brother Terry nodded. He put his hands together. ‘I do not believe that an evil man cannot also be a good man. Some evil is necessary. Consider Judas, one of history’s most reviled traitors. He is hated, is he not, for the wrongs he committed against the Christ? But why?’

I sighed.

‘Exactly. The whole thing rests on Judas. Without Judas’s betrayal then the rest does not happen. We don’t have the crucifixion, we don’t have the ascension, we do not have our sins being washed away by the Lord’s sacrifice. So why should we hate a man that commits evil if the evil leads to good?’

I knew what he was getting at. He was saying that Mikey doing what he did was a good thing, because it brought him here, to the camp, where Brother Terry and his cult thought he could be Jesus and reveal him. It was bollocks – that much was clear.

‘Do you see what I’m saying, Michael?’ he asked.

Mikey sucked his lip. ‘You think I’m Jesus but only not yet. Something else happens and then I am.’

Brother Terry laughed. ‘That’s a fair summary.’

‘So what do you want from us?’ I asked again.

‘I just want you to stay and be with us so that we can learn from your brother.’

‘And then what?’

Brother Terry looked at me and I was struck by the peace in his face. His eyelids were so heavy they appeared slick, oiled in some way. ‘And then something happens and everything changes.’

 

I walked headfirst into Isaac as I left Terry’s yurt. He’d been kneeling by the door flap, listening in, and I nearly toppled over him.

He looked up at me, forehead furrowed.

I told him to come with me and I dragged him up, stumbling and lurching, out of the camp and higher on the slope. We didn’t speak until we made the waterfall. The tumbling foam hissed in falling white bundles. I made Isaac sit down on a rock, jutting like a molar from the earth, dark from the fall’s spray.

‘You said you wouldn’t talk about it,’ I said.

He gathered his robes up in twisting hands. ‘I know I did. I’m sorry. It wasn’t the right thing to do but Terry…’ He looked at the water, at the grey lather formed by the colliding streams.

‘What about Terry?’

‘It’s just… He knows stuff. He can tell stuff about you, sometimes without you even knowing it yourself. After I left you guys at the ferry and I hitched up north he could smell it on me. He was like, Isaac, tell me about your travels. And I was all like, Oh naw, nothing much happened Brother Terry. But he knew something was up.’

He finished talking and looked at the falls.

‘So you sold us out, just like that?’

‘Aye.’

‘And what did you tell him – exactly, I mean to say?’

‘What did I tell him?’

‘Aye.’

‘Well you know how he’s, like, obsessed with… Y’know, the wee lassie? Whatever her name was. And obviously…’

I cut him off. ‘Gail Shaw.’

‘Eh?’

‘That was her name,’ I said.

The blood was kicking in. New veins were blooming in my neck, my arms, raised like worms.

‘Gail Shaw?’

‘Aye.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘I think I kent that.’

He could sense something coming off me, some odour, some pheromone. It was animal, the caution he wore. His head was low as he considered me, watching my stillness.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

‘Me?’ I laughed. ‘I’m fine.’

He swallowed. ‘Are you… Are you going to do something to me?’

We were quiet for a time, him low on the rock, me standing, swaying. He held his hands together.

‘No. I don’t think so,’ I said.

‘Right,’ he said, and then, ‘I’m sorry.’

I found myself smiling from nowhere. ‘It’s fine.’

He smiled too. ‘You look like your brother when you’re happy. I never noticed before.’

‘Folk say that,’ I said.

I wasn’t going to do anything to him, I knew that. My blood was going down and I was growing calmer.

I was getting better.

But though.

But there was the frothing, churning water below us. There were the rocks, jutting over the edge like green fingers.

I wasn’t going to do anything to him. I was going to put my hand out and help him up because, aye, maybe he’d let us down, and maybe he was a snake, but I sensed it would be good for me not to act.

I put my hand out. He looked at it and then took it. I swung him up and there was a moment, mid-swing, where something moved in me, like a snake uncoiling in my belly, like a scorpion’s claws rattling in my throat. He was upright and we were touching and I could do whatever I wanted to.

 

The evening meal was in full swing when we got back. There was a great cast iron cauldron over the fire, held up by poles, and the clearing was heavy with the old smell of soup boiling. Mikey was sat on his own by the fire, hunched over with elbows on knees. He’d cleaned himself up and his mouth was free of blood.

We went down either side of him.

‘What the fuck,’ he whispered to me, ‘is going on?’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘They think I’m God or Jesus fucken Christ, man. No offence, Isaac.’

‘None taken.’

‘And that Terry knows everything about everything.’

‘Aye,’ I nodded.

I sat beside him for a while and we watched the people preparing food. My instincts were telling me to move, to pack up and go, to drive the van until we reached a place where no lives moved in the vicinity but our own. But there was also the possibility that out there in the winding roads were unmarked vehicles, coasting corners, keeping many eyes peeled for young men matching our descriptions. At least here in camp we had the element of disguise on our side.

‘I say we ride it out,’ I told Mikey. ‘See what happens.’

‘You reckon?’ asked Mikey, locking eyes with the fire’s movements, his pupils flickering from its light – orange on his chin, his jaw.

‘Aye, I reckon.’

‘Maybe,’ said Mikey, and we ate together and were quiet.

I couldn’t shake the comment he had made earlier. What had he meant by me getting him into trouble? I mean, aye, all right, maybe I’d had to make a few tough decisions so far. Maybe I hadn’t always chosen wisely either, I could hold my hands up to that. I wasn’t perfect. Who was? Maybe we should have just run off when all the stuff happened with the archaeologists. Maybe he’d have been happier if we just sat in a cold tent getting probably the police called on us by that nosy bastard whose house we took. Maybe we shouldn’t have picked up the Americans and maybe whatever happened with me and the lad, whatever his name was, maybe that shouldn’t have happened. Mikey’s problem was that he didn’t realise how hard all this was on me.

I squinted at him through the fire’s heat as he spooned up the lumpy paste. Aye, I’d be watching him all right because of course I cared about him and of course I wanted him safe, but he had another thing coming if he thought he was going to beat me.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Fine. You?’

‘Fine.’

Did he ever think of all the sacrifices I had made? Did he think of the stares I felt creeping hot on my spine as I walked in public after he went?

Did he ever think of that?

Did he fuck.

Everyone assumed that I was fine. My mother was more concerned about Mikey’s appeals and then her man, Mikey’s dad, running off, to ever give me a second thought. He left with no warning in the months after Mikey went and then it was just me and Mum, alone at home, ignoring each other, sending sharp wee comments under doors and around corners.

I thought I’d try and find a phone to call our mother, let her know how well I was doing without her help, without her pushing her beak in where it wasn’t needed. Perhaps I would take a stroll down to the village, see what she thought about that.

When they spoke to me in court, the lawyers, they wanted to know exactly what happened that day in the woods. That was easy for me, I could tell them precisely. I went though it scene by scene for them, as if it was playing on a screen before me. I told them about how he’d come home livid from school after his telling off from Mr MacPherson, about how I, acting as the responsible older brother, had suggested we tick school to blow off some steam.

Did I think that was a responsible thing to suggest? they asked me.

No, looking back, I didn’t. But I also didn’t realise what it would mean, in the long run.

I told them how we’d escaped the school and been chased off of the grounds by the jannie, chased from the swing park by the mums, hurled brick pieces at the tree.

They asked if all this was relevant.

Maybe not, I told them, but they had asked me to tell it as I remembered.

My story seemed too exact, they said.

Well, they could hardly blame me for having a good memory, could they?

They pricked up their ears when I mentioned the wee lassie. That got their attention right enough. I told them how she’d shown up and how Mikey had made her follow us, telling her he had something to show her, deeper in the woods.

Did I remember what she was wearing?

A dark blue school blazer, gym socks, hair in a smooth pony. This wee pin of a bird perched on her lapel.

I could remember that in so much detail?

I could.

And what had happened next Paul? Young Master Buchanan?

What had happened next, those years and years ago when my brother’s face was fresh, hairless, round? When we were young together and knew close to nothing? What happened was that we marched through the trees, through the twisted and shaded trees, Mikey ordering, sometimes carrying, the little girl on with us.

Her name was Gail Shaw. She was nine years old. Her mummy and daddy loved her very much. All this I learned later.

I had stopped and touched my fingertips on my brow, waiting, in court.

Is the witness unable to continue?

Drew the fingers away, pushed my head back, breathed sharply through my nostrils. I’ll struggle on.

They understood it was difficult for me but enough of the theatricals, if I didn’t mind.

Aye, course.

They wanted to know where we went, so I told them, exactly. This place in the woods, it’s a place famous as a place you could go shagging or drinking and there’s this great big treehouse up in the highest, thickest, oldest tree. Famous. Everyone knows that bit. We take her there and Mikey asks her what she thinks, of the treehouse like. The wee lassie says that aye, it’s nice enough but that she’ll have to be getting back to her mum, back to the swing park.

Do something, Mikey had said.

Do something? she asked.

Aye, do something.

Like what?

Like anything.

And then she looked at me, and when I described how she looked at me I laid it on thick for the courtroom. That look, my God. So sweet a child, so gentle a look.

All right, Mr Buchanan. Just the facts, if you don’t mind.

Mikey had said it again. Do something.

Her voice small, damp, soiled. What d’you mean?

If she didn’t know then Mikey wasn’t going to tell her.

All right, he’d spat, pacing around her in a slow circle.

She had looked up, through the cracks in the treetops, to the dreaming freeness of outer sky. She was so far away from all of that.

And, and, and.

I didn’t intervene. That’s the guilt I’ll have to carry around for the rest of my living days, I told the courtroom. Maybe my brother is guilty of whatever you accuse him of, but I too am guilty, of the crime of allowing a precious candle to be snuffed out.

I saw one woman in the back row’s eye bulge from the shining bloat of a tear.

Perfect.

All right Master Buchanan. Again, just the basics if you please.

Sorry sir. It’s just a difficult thing to discuss.

The court understands. What happened next?

He spoke to her. He said she would never amount to anything, that she was stupid and useless and weak. He was shouting at her, close to her face and all her face was closed up from the terror of it.

The tearful woman put her hand against her nostrils, closed her eyes, sniffed. I didn’t know who she was.

And what happened next?

What happened next?

I stood and watched and I didn’t know what to do or say to turn it around and save the little girl, the wee lassie, and then it all gets difficult to remember and I’m by the fire in the camp, eating soup, remembering being stood in the court, my back sweating in my cheap supermarket suit, remembering all the days and nights in between, in bed, alone, remembering remembering remembering.

In the dream I had pulled back the ferns and found the fleshy mass in undergrowth with its ridges of jutting muscle and odd scratchy tufts of hair, wrestling with itself, grinding into itself in the dew. Hands gripping and squeezing and rinsing life from human sponge.

And that was what had happened next.

Except that’s not how I told it, in court. I wasn’t as daft as that, was I? If I was guilty of anything it was the white lie of when I left the scene. You see, your honour, I didn’t realise how far it would go, could not anticipate the depth of my brother’s sickness, and so I fled. Before the deed itself, that is.

And does Master Buchanan not feel that this version of events is a little convenient for he himself?

Aye, perhaps, but something being convenient doesn’t stop it being true.

Come clean, Master Buchanan. Come clean. You were present at the scene and you know it. Your version of events has been curated to extricate yourself as far as possible from what happened. Frankly, the court isn’t buying any of it.

I fled. I was absent. I was no more present than you were, than any of us were.

No further questions, no further anything, because once again I had won. I was on top. I remembered sitting in the hard court chair and looking across the room and feeling my blood kick in so hard that I had to fight myself not to laugh or scream.

I breathed in and the smell was vegetables – stinking lentils and earth. Tang of wood smoke in wet rubber tree scent.

Mikey was eyeing me across the shimmering hot air the fire released.

‘I was miles away there,’ I said.

 

I waited until midnight and then set out. I walked into town by myself, in the dark, with the moon and her reflected blades floating out on the loch to guide my path. There was a wee country pub there, much like any other – warm, musty and small. They had a pay phone in the back that I fed silver coins to. I knew our number off by heart.

She picked up on the third purr.

‘Deirdre Buchanan,’ she said.

‘It’s Paul.’

‘Oh,’ she said, the word escaping from her like gas.

‘How’s it going, Mum?’

‘Oh, you know,’ she said. ‘I’m getting by.’

‘That’s positive.’

‘Is Michael there? Any chance I could have a word?’

‘He’s not with me. He’s somewhere else.’

‘Ah,’ like something small and sharp being twisted into her.

‘I’m here though. Aren’t you interested in talking to me? Hear about all the things I’ve done?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Aye?’

‘Uh. How’s your health?’

I sighed. ‘All right then.’ I took the phone away from my ear.

‘No,’ said the little metal voice escaping the receiver. ‘Don’t go.’

I held it to my face and it was still warm. I imagined her panicked breath spilling out the holes, tickling the miniscule hairs of my ear.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘What’s the situation back there? Are the press still sniffing around?’

‘The press?’ she asked.

‘Aye.’

‘Well, no. I don’t know what…’

‘Good,’ I interrupted. ‘That’s great news. How about the police, the social services?’

‘They’ve been going crazy ever since you took him. He’s on parole, Paul. He needs to see them once a week at the very least. They’ll take him away again when he comes back home,’ this last part spluttered with fear or maybe anger.

‘We’ll see about that,’ I said. ‘Here, have they mentioned the psychiatrist or whatever it was?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Mikey’s insistent,’ I explained. ‘He doesn’t want to see a psychologist or a psychiatrist or anyone like that. He just wants to forget everything that happened and move on.’

‘Fine. If that’s what he wants.’

‘He doesn’t ever want to talk about that day ever again. It’s too much for him.’

‘That sounds reasonable,’ she said. ‘You need to bring him home and then we can explain it to them.’

I snorted. ‘Hm.’

‘Is that a good noise or a bad noise, Paul?’

‘It’s a wait and see noise,’ I said, replacing the receiver.

I used the pub’s bogs and then set out across the carpet for the door. I was nearly away when a shape caught my eye.

It was a dark loudness, it was sharp briars.

It was a woman’s hair – curly, familiar. She was at the far end of the bar looking grim, a group of people around her. She was sipping from the head of a Guinness.

My brain laughed.

No way, it said. Can’t be!

‘It is,’ I said to myself.

Sam, from the dig, in a pub within walking distance of us. Just sitting there.

My brain laughed again.

She was deep in conversation with some hill-walker type – the anorak, the boots, all the usual gear. He was nodding along to her words. I couldn’t take it, so I went outside. Across the water the moon was wobbling over black hills. I didn’t know what that land was. Some kind of munro or beinn or mull. These places, these fucken names.